Lasers have been advancing science and threatening move characters since the 1960s, but you may have noticed they always have a distinct colour. Now, a team of scientists has developed the world’s first white laser.

31 July 2015

Whether you have fibre supplying Internet access to your home or not, you use optical systems to send and receive information every single day. This stunning video takes a look at the scientists and engineers that have enabled light to be used for human communication.

29 July 2015

How about this for a bright idea: A team of researchers from Harvard Medical School has developed three different ways to turn individual cells into functioning lasers that emit light when they’re excited.

28 July 2015

This may look like a piece of abstract art, but you’re actually looking at the cutting-edge of optical technology. Using a branch of physics known as plasmonics, this microscopic set-up can pulse light on-and-off a bewildering 90 billion times per second.

9 June 2015

The twinkly flashing lights of fireflies are a classic sign of summer, but the insects aren’t blinking for your aesthetic benefit. They’re courting in an absolutely cutthroat meet market, and some scientists are afraid that human activities could be making it harder for them to succeed.

20 May 2015

Valve’s virtual reality demo at GDC was nothing short of magical — it used fancy emitter technology to let us actually walk around a demo room. It felt so real. Valve calls the tech Lighthouse, and it’s kind of genius.

23 April 2015

Video: Light painting is usually used to snazz up still photographs in an awesome ‘how they do that’ kind of way but this is even cooler. Darren Pearson made this entire video of moving light paintings by hand drawing over 1000 light paintings and capturing them with long exposure at night to create the effect as if the light was alive and characters in a movie.

20 April 2015

I think we can all agree that the situation with cameras and megapixels has reached maddening heights. DSLRs are expected to have insane resolutions, but mobile phones? No one was really asking for 50+ MP shooters in their iPhones and Galaxys by the end of 2016, but it’s looking possible thanks to a new startup called Light.

9 April 2015

Today most people do not get enough sleep. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has called insufficient sleep an epidemic. While we are finally paying attention to the importance of sleep, the need for dark is still mostly ignored.